Destroyer 022 - Brain Drain

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A DEADLY MEETING

"What do you want?" Chiun asked. "Your destruction," said the nurse. "Why?"

said Chiun.

"Because while you live you are a danger to me."

"We can share the earth."

"I am not here to share the earth. I am here to survive," said the nurse. "You two represent a force that has been

continuing for centuries and centuries. And you are the one force I must destroy."

But Chiun and Remo had other plans ...

THE DESTROYER SERIES:

#1 CREATED, #20

THE DESTROYER #21

#2 DEATH CHECK #22

#3 CHINESE PUZZLE #23

#4 MAFIA FIX #24

#5 DR. QUAKE #25

#6 DEATH THERAPY #26

#7 UNION BUST #27

#8 SUMMIT CHASE #28

#9 MURDER'S SHIELD #29

#10 TERROR SQUAD #30

#11 KILL OR CURE #31

#12 SLAVE SAFARI #32

#13 ACID ROCK

#14 JUDGMENT DAY #33

#15 MURDER WARD #34

#16 OIL SLICK #35

#17 LAST WAR DANCE #36

#18 FUNNY MONEY #37

#19 HOLY TERROR #38

ASSASSIN'S PLAY-OFF DEADLY SEEDS BRAIN DRAIN CHILD'S PLAY KING'S CURSE SWEET DREAMS IN ENEMY HANDS THE LAST

TEMPLE SHIP OF DEATH THE FINAL DEATH MUGGER BLOOD THE HEAD MEN KILLER

CHROMOSOMES VOODOO DIE CHAINED REACTION LAST CALL POWER PLAY BOTTOM LINE BAY CITY BLAST

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PINNACLE BOOKS • LOS ANGELES

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

THE DESTROYER: BRAIN DRAIN

An original Pinnacle Books edition, published for the first time anywhere.

ISBN: 0-523-40898-6

First printing, January 1976 Second printing, April 1976 Third printing, April 1978 Fourth printing, November 1979

Cover illustration by Hector Garrido Printed in the United States of America

PINNACLE BOOKS, INC.

2029 Century Park East

Los Angeles, California 90067

For Roxy

who knows that easy means strong-and most of all for the awesome, magnificence of the glorious house of

Sinanju which sometimes recognizes the Post Office Box 1149, Pittsfield, Mass., 01201 (twentieth century only).

BRAIN DRAIN

Just outside the door, a rookie patrolman let go of his coffee and cigarette breakfast, all

over his blue uniform, then retched up solids from the day before. He could not enter the

basement room in Greenwich Village. A New York City detective sergeant helped him

back up the iron steps to street level.

Inside the room, a city coroner slipped on the blood and half-flipped onto his back. Getting up, he skidded

in the oozing red that had washed over what might once have been a robin's-egg-blue rug. The back of his

checkered coat was soaked dark where he had landed. His knees, where he had leaned, were red pads. His

hands were red, and he couldn't use his notebooks. The room smelled like the inside of a cow's belly.

Excrement and intestines.

Manhattan's chief of homicide detectives, Jake

Waldman, saw the young patrolman outside, dry-heaving over a fire hydrant, with one of his detectives

holding him steady.

"Too much for the kid?" asked Inspector Waldman.

"Too much for anyone," said the detective.

"A stiff's a stiff. Only the living hurt you," said Inspector Waldman to the rookie, who nodded respectfully

between heaves. The detective nodded, too.

He had once seen Waldman talking away in a room with a month-old stiff that would

have made a rhinoceros gag, the cigar bouncing around his lips, while other men left

because they had to get a breath of breatheable air or go insane. Waldman had a

stomach of boilerplate iron. He would eat pastrami sandwiches, dripping with delicatessen

cole slaw, in the city morgue and wonder why other people thought this peculiar.

When Willie "Grapes" Eiggi got it with two Bren guns all over his face at Gigliotti's

Clam House on Mulberry Street, a coroner found a trace of potato salad and mustard in

what was left of the eye socket and commented that Waldman must have seen the

body already. He had.

"Tomato juice and pickles, kid. It'll fix you right up," said Inspector Waldman, his

thick square face nodding with fatherly concern, his cigar bobbing up and down for

emphasis.

At this, the rookie cop flailed wildly in another dry heave.

"What'd I say?" asked Waldman. People were always reacting strangely.

He was glad the press wasn't here yet. Television

had its own crazy rules. He had been a detective when TV news was first coming in, and one day he'd seen

a departmental directive ordering that "such detectives and other police personnel shall not, repeat NOT,

consume candy bars or any other sweets, nourishments, condiments, or beverages at homicide scenes, since

television reportage of the above-said masticatory acts tends to promote an image of departmental insensitivity

toward the deceased."

"What's that supposed to mean?" young Waldman had asked a full detective

sergeant. He knew that good police writing could be measured by how many times a person

had to use a dictionary to decipher it. It would be years before he could write like that, let

alone speak to reporters like that.

"It means, Waldy, that you shouldn't have eaten that potato knish over that mutilated

nun's body in front of the television cameras yesterday."

Waldman had shrugged. He never had understood Catholicism too well. Now, years later,

watching the rookie struggle for air over the hydrant, he was glad the television cameras

hadn't arrived yet. He had just bought a fresh, salted pretzel and he didn't want it to get cold

in his pocket.

Waldman saw the coroner stumble up the steps leading from the basement, his hands and

knees bloodied, his eyes wide in shock.

"Hey, get a doctor," yelled Waldman to the detective helping the rookie.

"Doctors have been here and left," the detective yelled back. "They're all dead inside."

"We've got a hurt man here. The coroner," said Waldman.

"It's not my blood," said the coroner.

"Oh," said Waldman. He saw a press car weave behind the police barricade down the street and quickly

finished his pretzel, stuffing the last chunk into an already-full mouth. He just wouldn't talk for a minute,

that was all.

Going down the iron steps, he saw the coroner had left bloody footprints. The little

cement well before the door smelled of fresh urine, despite the cold March rain of the day

before. The small drain in the center of the well was clogged with the soot that collected

in all open water in the city. The coroner had left bloody prints on the door. What was

the matter with these people? This was a murder scene and you weren't supposed to go

touching things. Everyone was acting like rookies. Waldman poked the green, paint-

chipped wooden door open, using the rubber end of a pencil. A large grain of salt from

the pretzel caught in a lower right tooth. It hurt. It would disappear when he could get his

mouth empty enough to suck it out.

The door creaked open and Waldman stepped gingerly inside, looking to avoid the blood

pools and chewing rapidly. There were no dry islands. The floor rippled with human

blood, a small wall-to-wall lake, slippery red. A white 150-watt bulb suspended from the

ceiling was reflected in the red slick. To his right, a head looked dumbly up at him from a

couch pillow, its right ear just a dark hole near a bloody temple. A pile of bloody pants

seemed entangled under a small wrought-iron table at the far end of the room. Waldman

looked closer. There was no body attached to them. Closer. It was three legs. Differ-

ent shoes. Three different shoes. At least three deaths.

The room smelled of released body smells, with an overtone of sticky-sweet

hashish. But it was not the smell that did it.

Waldman stopped chewing and spat the pretzel out of his mouth.

"Oh," he said. "Oh. Wow. Oh."

He had seen the walls. Cement block covered with random psychedelic posters. A kid's pad, or an artist's. But

no pad in Greenwich Village ever had walls like this, walls that dripped small lines of blood. Walls with

holes that human arms stuck out from, right near the ceiling. It looked as if the walls had arms. A pinky was

contracted on an arm that had only ceiling molding for an armpit.

Death was death, and raw death was raw death, but this stepped beyond. Not in his

years of picking floaters out of the East River or even bodies from garbage dumps where

rats gnawed their way inside to feast had he seen something like this. Death was death.

But this ? And above the doorway in the plaster ceiling, were embedded the blood-drained

trunks of four bodies. Three male. One female.

The room darkened, and Waldman felt himself becoming light, but he kept his

balance and made his way out the door again, where he breathed deep the blessed stench

of natural city air. Years of training and using his common sense took over. He got the

police photographers in and out quickly, warning them beforehand that they had a

horror ahead of them and that they should dotheir job as quickly, and especially as

mechanically, as they could.

The photographs would place the parts of bodies where they had been in the room. He personally tagged

limb and head and random organs on a large chart of the room. He placed a limp eyeball in a clear plyofilm

bag and labeled it. He got two detectives to question people in the building, another to track down the

landlord. He had interns from nearby St. Vincent's Hospital help detectives to un-wedge the remnants of

people from the walls and ceiling.

The butchered pieces were brought to the morgue. It was when they tried to reassemble the bodies for

identification, which he knew by sight would be impossible-only fingerprints and dental work could identify

these leavings-that he discovered the other beyond-reason element in a slaughter he had already stamped in

identification, which he knew by sight would be impossible-only fingerprints and dental work could identify

these leavings-that he discovered the other beyond-reason element in a slaughter he had already stamped in

his mind as beyond reason. The chief coroner was the first to point it out.

"Your people forgot to pick up something."

"What?"

"Look at the skulls."

The brains had been scraped out. "It was such a mess in there," said Waldman.

"Yeah. But where are the brains?"

"They must be here," said Waldman.

"Your people get everything?" asked the coroner.

"Yeah. We're even cleaning up now."

"Well, the brains are missing."

"They've got to be here somewhere. What about those bags full of gook?" asked

Waldman.

"The gook, as you call it, includes everything but the brains."

"Then that organ of the deceased bodies was

transported from the premises of the homicide by the perpetrator," said Waldman.

"That's right, Inspector," said the coroner. "Somebody took the brains."

At the press conference Inspector Waldman had to tell a Daily News reporter three

times that the organs of the deceased that were missing were not the organs that the

reporter thought they were. "Brains, if you really want to know," said Waldman.

"Shit," said the Daily News reporter. "There goes a great story. Not that this isn't good.

But it could have been great."

Waldman went home to his Brooklyn apartment without having dinner. Thinking about

the homicide, he had trouble sleeping. He had thought he had seen it all, but this was

beyond . . . beyond ... beyond what? Not reason really. Reason had patterns. Someone,

obviously with power tools, had taken apart human beings. That was a pattern. And the

removal of the brains, no matter how disgusting, was a pattern. The arms in the walls,

but not the legs, were part of the pattern. And so were the trunks of the bodies.

It must have taken a good two hours to whack out the crevices in the ceiling and the walls

and to insert the bodies properly. But where were the tools? And if it did take two hours or

even an hour, why was there only one set of bloody footprints when he had entered. The

rookie cop had taken one look at the doorway and been escorted up by a detective. The

first doctors to arrive had just looked inside the room and made a blanket pronouncement of

death.

Only the coroner's footprints were on the stairs when Waldman went in. How had the killer or killers left

without leaving bloody footprints?

"Hey, Jake, come to bed," said Waldman's wife.

Waldman looked at his watch. It was 2:30 A.M.

"At this hour, Ethel?"

"I mean to sleep," said his wife. "I can't sleep without you near me."

So Inspector Jake Waldman slid under the quilt with his wife, felt her snuggle to him,

and stared at the ceiling.

Assuming the homicides were rational, because of the pattern, what was the reason for the

pattern? Arms in walls and bodies in ceilings. Brains removed.

"Hey, Jake," said Mrs. Waldman.

"What?"

"If you're not going to sleep, get out of bed."

"Make up your mind," said Waldman.

"Go to sleep," said Ethel.

"I am. I'm thinking."

"Stop thinking and go to sleep."

"How do you stop thinking ?"

"You drop dead already."

Jake Waldman sucked the last small fragment of salt from his right lower molar.

In the morning, Ethel Waldman noticed that her husband didn't touch the bagels, only

picked at the lox with onions and eggs, and hardly bothered to sip his cup of tea.

"There's something wrong with the food already ?" she asked.

"No. I'm thinking."

"Still thinking? You were thinking last night. How long are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking."

"You don't like my eggs."

"No. I like your eggs."

"You like my eggs so much you're letting them turn to stone."

"It's not your eggs. I'm thinking."

"There's another woman," said Ethel Waldman.

"Woman, shwoman, what other woman?" asked Waldman.

"I knew it. There's someone else," said Ethel Waldman. "Someone who doesn't ruin

her nails cooking for you or get wrinkles worrying about how to make you happy. Some

little street chippie with cheap perfume and a young set of boobs who doesn't care beans

about you like I care. I know."

"What are you talking about?"

"I hope you and that cheap tart you're running around with are very happy. Get out

of here. Get out of here."

"C'mon, Ethel, I got problems."

"Get out of here, animal. Go to your whore. Go to your whore."

"I've got work. I'll see you tonight, Ethel."

"Get out. Out, animal."

And in the hallway of the fifth floor of their apartment building, Jake Waldman

heard his wife yell out to the world:

"Lock up your daughters, everyone. The whore-master's on the loose."

At the division headquarters, there was a phone call waiting for Inspector Waldman.

It was Ethel. She would do anything to patch up their marriage.

They should try again. Like adults. She would forget the incident with the actress.

"What actress? What incident?"

"Jake. If we're trying again, let's at least be honest."

"All right, all right," said Waldman, who had been through this before.

"Was she a famous actress ?"

"Ethel!"

And that held the family problems for the day. The mayor's office wanted a special

report and the commissioner's office wanted a special report and some agency in Washington

wanted some kind of report for a special study and a psychologist from Wayne State

University wanted to talk to Waldman, so Inspector Waldman hauled the lowest grade

detective he saw first and gave him an assignment.

"Keep those dingbats off my back," he said.

The police photographers had come up with something interesting. Perhaps Waldman had

missed it during the rush to finish up the on-the-scene work. But could he make out a certain

poster on the wall through the lines of blood? Right under that arm there?

"Hmmmm," said Waldman.

"What do you think?" asked the photographer.

"I think I'm going back to that basement. Thank you."

"Crazy, huh?" said the photographer.

"No. Reasonable," said Waldman.

There were knots of people around the basement apartment, both attracted but kept at a

distance by the police barricades. The rookie had apparently

recovered well because he looked professional and bored standing in front of the iron

steps leading to the basement.

"I told you it was nothing, kid," commented Waldman going down the steps.

"Yeah, nothing," said the rookie cockily.

"I told you it was nothing, kid," commented Waldman going down the steps.

"Yeah, nothing," said the rookie cockily.

"You'll be picking up eyeballs in plyofilm bags in no time and thinking nothing of it,

kid," said Waldman, noticing the rookie double over and run toward the curb. Funny

kid.

The basement room now smelled like a sharp commercial disinfectant. The rug was gone

and the floor was scrubbed, but much of the brown stain could not be scrubbed away.

It had soaked into the wooden floor. That was strange. Basement apartments usually

had cement floors. Waldman hadn't noticed the construction before because of the blood.

Funny how much new blood was like oil, a slippery coating when first spilled.

Waldman took the photograph out of the manila envelope, tearing off the little silver

snap that went through the hole in the flap. The disinfectant rose beyond smell. It was a

taste now. Like swallowing a mothball.

The glossy photograph reflected the harsh light from the bulb overhead. The room felt surprisingly cool,

even for a basement. He looked at the photograph, then looked at the wall. The wall posters had been scraped

during the cleaning process and now were only barely discernible strips.

But he had the photograph. And between the photograph and the small strips left on the

wall, he saw it. On the wall there had been a surrealistic poster of a room. And from

the walls of that room hung

arms. And in the ceilings were trunks of bodies. And looking at the photograph of

what the poster had been and at the remnants of the poster now, Inspector Waldman saw

that the room had been made into a replica of this mad poster. Almost exactly in

proportion to the picture. It was an imitation of the picture. He stepped back on the

creaking floor. An exact, proportional, almost slavish imitation. He felt something about

this, and his instinct told Mm it was important. What was it?

Waldman looked down at the photograph again. Sure. That was it. There was no

deviation from the poster at all. The room had reproduced the horror of the poster

exactly, almost as if the killer had been programmed to do it, almost as if he had no

feelings of his own. It was as if a mindless ape had imitated art and created nothing but

death.

Of course, none of this could go in a report. He'd be laughed out of the department. But he wondered what

sort of killers could remain calm enough to exactly copy a poster during the hysteria of mass murder.

Probably a devil cult of some sort. In that case, there would be more of these, and the perpetrators were

doomed. Almost anyone had a fair chance of getting away with something once. Sometimes twice. But

something like this they would have to do again, and when they got to the third time, or maybe even the

second, some circumstance, some accident of performance, some loose word somewhere, some left wallet, some

random thing, like even a door locking behind them or being seen in the act, would get them. Time, not

brilliance, was the law's edge.

Waldman stepped back. One of the boards on the

floor was loose. The place shouldn't have had a wooden floor anyhow. He stamped down hard on one end of

the board. The other rose, like a brown-stained square tongue. He leaned down and ripped it up. It covered

small plastic bags with oblong brown wads slightly smaller than Hershey bars. So that was the reason for

the flooring. Waldman smelled the contents of a bag. Hashish. He kicked off the board next to the first.

More bags. The basement was a stash. In rough estimates, he saw about thirty-five hundred dollars worth

already. He kicked over another board. Where he had expected to find bags, Waldman saw an oblong tape

deck, with a small dim yellow light in the control panel. The spool spun around and around, whipping a

liver-colored end of tape against the gray plastic edge of a panel. He stared at it going around, the tape

softly whipping the panel edge. He saw a black cord lead through a drilled hole in the wooden floor support.

The machine was on record.

He pressed stop, rethreaded the spool and put the machine on rewind. The tape spun back rapidly. The

machine had belonged to the dealer. Many pushers had them. A tape could help give them protection. It could

raise a little blackmail money. It had many uses.

Before the tape rewound completely, he pressed stop again. Then play.

"Hello, hello, hello. I'm so glad you're all here." The voice was silky high, like a drag

queen's. "I suppose you're all wondering, wondering, wondering what lovelies I have for

you."

"Money, man." This voice was heavier and deeper. "Bread, baby. The mean

green."

13"Of course, lovelies. I wouldn't deprive you of sustenance."

"Of course, lovelies. I wouldn't deprive you of sustenance."

"For a dealer, that's the level truth. Totally level." A girl's voice.

"Hush, hush, lovelies. I'm an artist. I just do other things to live. Besides, the walls

have ears."

"You probably put 'em there, mother."

"Hush, hush. No negativities in front of my guest."

"He the one that want something?"

"Yes, he does. His name is Mr. Regal. And he has given me money for you all. Much

money. Lovely money."

"And we ain't gonna see but a spit of it."

"There's plenty for you. He wants you to do something in front of him. No, Maria, don't

take off your clothes. That's not what he wants. Mr. Regal wants you, as artists, to share

your creativity with him."

"What's he doin' with the pipe?"

"I told him that hash helps creativity."

"That dude be goin' through a full ounce. He gotta be blind now."

And then the voice. That chilling flat monotone. Waldman felt a cramp in his legs from

kneeling down near the tape. Where had he heard a voice like that before?

"I am not intoxicated, if that is what you suspect. Rather, I have full control of my

senses and reflexes. Perhaps this inhibits my creativity. That is why I smoke more than the

normal amount, or what you would consider normal, man."

"You jive funny, turkey."

"That is a derogatory term, and I have found that

for one to tolerate such language often leads to further abuses of one's territorial

integrity. Therefore, desist, nigger."

"Now, now, now, lovelies. Let us make pretty. Each of you will show your art to Mr. Regal. Let him see

what you do when you are creative."

The tape sounded blank except for shuffling feet. Waldman heard indistinguishable low

mumblings. Someone asked for "the red," which Waldman assumed was paint. At one

point, someone sang an off-key tune about oppression and how freedom was just another

form of deprivation and that the singer needed copulation badly with whomever she was

singing to, but she didn't want her head messed with. "Just My Body, Baby" seemed

to be the title of the song.

The flat voice again. "Now I noted that the painter seemed highly calm when working,

and the singer seemed aroused. Is there an explanation for this, faggot?"

"I hate that word, but everything is so lovely I'll ignore it. Yes, there is a reason. All

creativity comes from the heart. While the face and sounds may be different, the

heart, the lovely heart, is the center of the creative process, Mr. Regal."

"Incorrect." That flat far-away voice again. "The brain sends all creative signals. The

body itself-liver, kidney, intestines or heart-plays no part in the creative process. Do not

lie to me, queer."

"Hmmmm. Well, I see you're into an insulting bag. Heart is only a phrase. Hardly

do we mean a body organ. Heart is that essence of creativity. Physically, of course, it

comes from the brain."

"Which part of the brain?"

"I don't know."

"Continue."

Waldman heard a heavy banging of feet and assumed it was a dance. Then there was a chopping sound.

"Sculpture, lovelies, might be the ultimate art."

"It looks like a male reproductive organ." The flat voice.

"That's a work of art, too. You'd know, if you ever tasted it." Giggle. The fag.

There were a few mumbled requests to pass a pipe, probably filled with hashish.

"Well, there you have it." The fag.

"Have what?" The flat voice.

"Creativity. A song. A dance. A painting. A piece of sculpture. Perhaps you would like

to try, Mr. Regal? What would you like to do? You must remember of course that to be

creative you must do something different. Difference is the essence of creativity.

to try, Mr. Regal? What would you like to do? You must remember of course that to be

creative you must do something different. Difference is the essence of creativity.

Come on now, Mr. Regal. Do something different."

"Other than sculpture and dancing and painting and singing?"

"Oh yes, that would be lovely." The fag.

"I don't know what to do." The flat voice.

"Well, let me give you a hint. Often the beginning of creativity is copying what's

already been done, but in a different way. You build creativity by copying in a different

medium. For instance, you change a painting into a sculpture. Or vice versa. Look

around. Find something and then change it into a different medium."

And suddenly there were screams and awful tearing sounds, cracking bones and

joints that came

apart like thick, soft balloons stretched too far. And the wild desperate screams of the singer.

"No, no, no, no. No I" It was a wail, it was a chant, it was a prayer. And it wasn't answered. Snap!

Pop! And there were no more screams. Waldman heard the heavy crunch of plaster, and it hit the ground

with a splash. Probably in a pool of blood. Plaster, then splash.

"Lovely." The flat voice. This time it echoed through the room. Then the door closed on the tape.

Inspector Waldman rewound the tape to where the screaming had begun. He played it forward, watching

the second hand of his watch. A minute and a half. All that done by one man. In eighty-five seconds.

Waldman rewound the tape and played it back. It had to be one man. There were the

voices of the four victims and their references to their guest, their one guest. He

listened carefully. It sounded like power tools at work but he did not hear any motors.

Eighty-five seconds.

Waldman stumbled trying to straighten up. He had been kneeling too long for his

fifty-year-old frame. You knew you were getting old when you couldn't do that

anymore. A young patrolman with a happy, glad-to-meet-you smile entered the

basement room.

"Yeah?" said Waldman. The patrolman's face was familiar. Then he saw the badge.

Of course. It must have been the model for the recruiting poster. Looked just like him,

right down to that artificial friendly grin. But that couldn't be a real badge. The

commercial artist hired by the police department, some radical freak, had done his

defiance bit by

giving the poster model a badge number no one had . . . "6969" which meant an

obscenity.

And this patrolman, now smiling at Waldman, had that number.

"Who are you?"

"Patrolman Gilbys, sir." That flat voice. It was the voice on the tape.

"Oh, good," said Waldman pleasantly. "Good."

"I heard you were on the case."

"Oh, yeah," said Waldman. He would put the suspect at ease, then casually get him to

the station house, and stick a revolver in his face. Waldman tried to remember when he

had last cleaned his pistol. A year and a half ago. No matter. A police special could take

all sorts of abuse.

"I was wondering what you meant by a horror scene? You were quoted as such in the

newspapers. You didn't mention creativity. Did you think it was creative?"

"Sure, sure. Most creative thing I've ever seen. All the guys down at the station

house thought it was a work of art. You know, we ought to go down and talk to them

about it."

"I do not know if you are aware of it, but your voice is modulating unevenly. This is a sure indication of

lying. Why do you lie to me, kike? I assume it is kike, unless, of course, it is kraut."

"Lie? Who's lying? It was creative."

"You will tell me the truth, of course. People talk through pain," said the phony patrolman with the glad-to-

meet-you smile and the obscene badge from the recruiting poster.

Waldman stepped back, reaching for his gun, but the patrolman's hand was squeezing his eyeballs.

His hands couldn't move and in the red, blinding pain, Waldman told the patrolman the

truth. It was the most uncreative horror Waldman had ever seen.

"Thank you," said the phony patrolman. "I took it right from the poster, but I did not think copying someone

else's work was creative. Thank you." Then, like a drill press, he pushed his right hand through Waldman's

heart until it met his left hand.

"So much for constructive criticism," the flat voice said.

His name was Remo and they wanted him to show his press pass. They wanted him

to do this so much that Brother George stuck the barrel of a Kalishnikov automatic rifle

under his right eye and Sister Alexa put a .45 caliber automatic in the small of his back,

while Brother Che stood across the room aiming a Smith and Wesson revolver at his skull.

"If he steps funny, we'll blow him to hamburger," Sister Alexa had said.

No one wondered why this man who said he was a reporter failed to be surprised when the hotel room

door opened. No one suspected that just not talking while waiting for him was not enough silence, that

tense breathing could be heard even through a door as thick as that one in the Bay State Motor Inn, West

Springfield, Mass. He seemed like such an ordinary man. Thin, just under six feet tall,

with high cheekbones. Only his thick wrists might have told them something. He seemed so casual in his

gray slacks and black turtleneck sweater and soft, glove-leather loafers.

"Let's see it," said Brother Che as Brother George closed the door behind him.

"I have it somewhere," said Remo reaching into his right pocket. He saw Brother

George's right index finger squeeze very close on the trigger, perhaps closer to firing than

Brother George knew. Sweat beaded on Brother George's forehead. His lips were

chapped and dry. He drew air into his lungs with short choppy breaths that seemed to

just replenish the tip of his supply of oxygen, as though he dared not risk a complete

exhale.

Remo produced a plastic-covered police shield issued by the New York City Police

Department.

"Where's the card from the Times? This is a police card," said Brother George.

"If he showed you a special card from the Times, you should start wondering," said

Brother Che. "All New York papers use cards issued by the police."

"They're a tool of the pig police," said Brother George.

"The cards come from the police so the reporters can get past police lines at fires and

things," said Brother Che. He was a scrawny man, with a bearded face that looked as

though it had once been bathed in crankcase oil and would never be fully clean again.

"I don't trust no pig," said Brother George.

"Let's off him," said Sister Alexa. Remo could see her nipples harden under her light

white peasant blouse. She was getting her sexual jollies from this.

He smiled at her, and her eyes lowered to her gun. Her pale, pottery-white skin

flushed red in the cheeks. Her knuckles were white around the gun, as if she were afraid it

would do its own bidding if not held tightly.

Brother Che got the card from Brother George.

"All right," said Brother Che. "Do you have the money?"

"I have the money if you have the goods," said Remo.

"How do we know we'll get the money if we show you what we've got?"

"You have me. You have the guns."

"I don't trust him," said Brother George.

"He's all right," said Brother Che.

"Let's off him now. Now," said Sister Alexa.

"No, no," said Brother Che, stuffing the Smith and Wesson into his beltless gray

pants.

"We can get it all printed ourselves. Every bit of it the way we want," said Sister

Alexa. "Let's stick it to him."

"And two hundred people who already think like us will read it," said Brother Che.

"No. The Times will make it international knowledge."

"Who cares what someone in Mexico City thinks ?" said Sister Alexa.

"I don't trust him," said Brother George.

"A little revolutionary discipline, please," said Brother Che. He nodded for George to stand by the door and

for Alexa to go to the closed bathroom door. The curtains were drawn over the window. It was twelve

stories down from the window, Remo knew. Brother Che nodded for Remo to sit at a small glass-and-

for Alexa to go to the closed bathroom door. The curtains were drawn over the window. It was twelve

stories down from the window, Remo knew. Brother Che nodded for Remo to sit at a small glass-and-

chrome coffee table.

Sister Alexa brought a pale, bespectacled man out of the bathroom. She helped him lug

a large black cardboard suitcase with new leather straps to the coffee table. He had the

wasted look of a man whose only sunshine had come from overhead fluorescent lights.

"Have we gotten the money?" he asked, looking at Brother Che.

"We will," said Brother Che.

The pale man opened the case and clumsily put it on the floor.

"I'll explain everything," he said, taking a stack of computer printouts from the

suitcase, laying out a manila envelope which proved to have news clippings, and finally

a white pad with nothing on it. He clicked a green ballpoint pen into readiness.

"This is the biggest story you're ever going to get," he told Remo. "Bigger than

Watergate. Bigger than any assassination. Much bigger than any CIA activity in Chile or

the FBI's wiretaps. This is the biggest story happening in America today. And it's a

scoop."

"He's already here to buy," said Brother Che. "Don't waste time."

"I'm a computer operator at a sanitarium on Long Island Sound in Rye, New York.

It's called Folcroft. I don't know if you've ever heard of it."

Remo shrugged. The shrug was a lie.

"Do you have pictures of it?" asked Remo.

"Anyone can just walk up and take pictures. You can get pictures," said the man.

"The place is not the point," said Brother Che.

"Right, I would guess," said the man. "I don't know if you're familiar with computers or not, but

you don't need all that much information to program them. Just what's necessary to

the core. However, four years ago, I began to do some figuring, right?"

"I guess," said Remo. He had been told it was three years ago that Arnold Quilt,

thirty-five, of 1297 Ruvolt Street, Mamaroneck, three children, M.S. 1961 MIT, had

started his "peculiar research" and was being watched. The day before, Remo had gotten

Arnold Quilt's picture. It did not capture the utter lack of natural light on his face.

"Basically, and I'd guess you want to simplify it this way, I suspected I was being

given a minimum of information for my job. Almost a calculated formula to deprive

me of any real reference point outside the narrow confines of my job. I later calculated

that there were thousands like me and that any function that might lead a person to a

fuller understanding of his job was separated in such a way that all cognitive reference

was negated."

"In other words, they'd have three people doing what one could do," said Brother

Che, seeing the man called Remo idly glance toward the shaded window. "One person

might get to understand a job fully, but if you have three doing it, none of them ever

finds out exactly where he fits in."

"Right," said Remo. He saw the tension go out of Sister Alexa's breasts.

"Well, we are separated in a half-dozen lunchrooms, so that people working on

the same program do not associate with each other. I ate with a guy who did nothing but

calculate grain prices."

"Get to the point," said Brother Che impatiently.

"The point is the purpose of this Folcroft, And I

started calculating and looking. I would move to different lunchrooms. I became as

friendly with Dr. Smith's secretary-Dr. Smith, he's the director-I became as friendly with

her as I could, but she was a stone wall."

He should get to know Smitty, thought Remo, if he really wants to know a stone wall.

"I'm sure the reporter would be more interested in what you found than in how you

found it. You can lay that out later. Tell him what you found," said Brother Che.

"Talk of illegal undercover. There is an organization operating in America today that is

like another government. It watches not only crime figures but law-enforcement agencies.

Do you wonder where all the leaks are coming from? Why one prosecutor will suddenly

turn on his whole political party and start indicting bigwigs and things? Well, look no

further. It's this organization. A lot of what this group does is blamed on the CIA and

FBI. It is so secret I doubt if more than two or three people know about it. It exposes

terrorist rings, it makes sure the police get tougher inside the law. It's like a secret

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ADEADLYMEETING"Whatdoyouwant?"Chiunasked."Yourdestruction,"saidthenurse."Why?"saidChiun."Becausewhileyouliveyouareadangertome.""Wecansharetheearth.""Iamnotheretosharetheearth.Iamheretosurvive,"saidthenurse."Youtworepresentaforcethathasbeencontinuingforcenturiesandcenturies.AndyouaretheoneforceImustd...

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Destroyer 022 - Brain Drain

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